The Reiki Panda: Flipping “The System” On Its Head

Disclaimer: this is a racial, cultural, whatever rant about togetherness and changing the paradigm. If you’re happy with how the system currently works, please keep it moving. Any close-minded comments will be responded to with kindness, but I do have a point where I’ll just ignore you if you’re trolling. You’ve been warned. 😁

At some point, there will be a flip, and “white people” will become the minority and the minority/person of color (POC) will become the majority. The world is trending in that direction, we’re becoming more and more mixed, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. However, to all those (including myself) who will experience being “in the majority” for the first time, my challenge to you is this: let’s not continue to perpetuate this systemic discrimination that holds EVERYONE back. If we start “white-shaming” or holding on to practices that were pushed onto people of color, especially out of anger or a sense of revenge, the system never changes. Someone is still getting marginalized because they look different than you. Let’s try to flip the whole paradigm on its head and be ALL-inclusive. I know this feels like a lot to ask, especially after being in a society where it’s far more likely to be discriminated against/locked up/looked down on just because of the color of your skin, but if the game flips and we do the same thing, does that make us any better than those that kept the previous system in place?

The racial/cultural tensions in our society are obviously running pretty high right now, so this is most definitely a hot button topic, but I implore those of us who are currently considered “minorities” to remember what it’s like to be in this position. If you wouldn’t wish it on your closest friends or family, why would you wish it on a stranger? Most people in this system have nothing to do with why it is like it is, and I can think of many sections of the “white population” who don’t even benefit from it due to classism. Until we drop racial, gender, and class bias, we are going to be stuck in a backwards society, no matter who is in charge.

Someone is always trying to get a leg up over someone else, and that’s the crux of the problem. I know this post isn’t going to be popular, but I’m coming from a pretty unique place. I’m considered to be Japanese (the yellow), African (the black), Hispanic (the brown), and French (the white). (side note: I believe claiming races/countries is super arbitrary, especially if you’ve never been there. If anything, I’m a global citizen). I’ve been called so many racially-charged names by this point in my life, you’d think I’d be a lot more angry. People couldn’t figure out what I was, so they went with the first thing that came to them. I’ve been called “nigger”, “chink”, “terrorist”, “boy”, “sand nigger”, “jap”, and “squinty” just to name a few (and not all by white people, black and brown people have had their say, too). Yet, here I am, standing tall and proud, not worried about any of that. It made me tougher and it made me realize that the color of our skin is a ridiculous thing to fight over. If I ripped your skin off, you would be pink, mushy, and gross, just like me.

This dynamic needs to change. As long as people are afraid or don’t understand someone else’s culture, there will be distrust and fear. I’m not saying kill the culture, but we gotta let people in without shaming and race-baiting. We’re all on this planet together, whether we like it or not. I’m also not advocating forgetting where we came from, just not to hold onto it so tightly. To be held down by our history is to be slaves to the past. We can create a new future together, one where our children and grandchildren think it’s ridiculous that I even penned this post in the first place.

I have a vision of a time where words like black and white refer to shades of light, not the color of your skin. I understand that this reality has a duality of us vs them, good vs bad, yin vs yang, and black vs white…but this duality doesn’t need to apply to race. This is a false understanding because race/culture can’t be broken down into just two sections and applying dualistic logic to something so complex is inherently limiting. Instead of being fearful and ignorant, all of us need to come together to breed understanding and community.